A word of advice

[leanne]

to any of my SCAdian friends, or just anyone who's considering using stencils on their garb/clothes.

The Tulip precut sticky stencils that they sell at Michaels are really thin and floppy. They stick well for about seven stencils, and then stop sticking well.

With a heavily detailed stencil like those, you really need them to stick well. And for a full hitoe (which is what I'm making), you really need about 10 stencils for the small panels and 20 for the big ones. For those of you counting along at home, that's about 120 stencils.

Yeah, I won't be doing that, not with those stencils. I'm probably going to be freehanding something, or producing my own stencil. Probably freehanding. Not sure what yet.

Comments

[keshwyn]

Oh dear. How many did you get on before you determined discretion was the better part of valor? :}

[leanne]

Just seven. I know when to stop. (; And oo, nice new icon!

[keshwyn]

Oh good. Glad it didn't muck up your lovely purple linen.

Maybe glue the stencil onto some heavy duty plastic? That'll make it less floppy, but I'm not sure how you'd get it to stick to the fabric temporarily. I know they make spray on adhesive but I don't know if that works with linen.

[leanne]

The trick would be cutting identical holes in the heavy-duty plastic ... or possibly just gluing it to bars around the edges, I'm not sure. Let me ponder this.

If it is pulled tight between the bars, it might work OK. The really hard part is those little fiddly bits in the center really need to be *down* or it's all blurry.

I'd be a little concerned about the interaction between the spray adhesive and the paint. Mark also suggested using a glue stick, and I wasn't real sure about that either.

I did muck up a bit of linen, but I had enough to cut another strip, so that wasn't a serious problem. I'm going to use the mucked-up piece as practice for whatever else I do with it.

[leanne]

(referring to the new archer icon, that is)